Ad Net Zero AI x Sustainability Exploratory Q1 2025 Series Summary

18 March 2025

In Q1 2025, Ad Net Zero held a global educational exploratory series on AI and Sustainability. This three-part series covered a wide range of topics, from foundational information and misconceptions about AI, energy use and natural resource use, specific applications in production and creative, to the future of AI policy and regulation across the globe.

Experts from trade organisations 4As, Ad Association, ISBA, along with Google, Havas, Scope3, Spark Foundry, Public Good, APR, Murphy Cobb, ITV all contributed to the series.

Read below for a summary of the takeaways, trailers (full videos are accessible by supporters only), and valuable resources that speakers and attendees shared.

Ad Net Zero will continue to engage with supporters on this topic and will look for opportunities to address this topic in each of the applicable Action Plan areas.

SESSION 1:

We Need To Talk About… AI x Sustainability: The Benefits and Impact for the Advertising Industry – 22nd January 2025

Watch the trailer here.

In the first of three exclusive AI x Sustainability webinars exploring the intersectionality of sustainability and AI through a corporate and advertising sector lens, we heard fantastic insights from our three industry leading speakers: Google EMEA’s Director of Sustainability – Adam Elman; ITV’s Principal Architect, Enterprise Architecture – Tim Davis; and Public Good’s Co-Founder and CEO – Dan Ratner.

Ad Net Zero’s US Director Rachel Schnorr, moderated the session and fielded thought-provoking questions from our largest audience yet, showcasing the level of engagement and interest in this topic.

Some key points arising from the discussion and questions from the audience:

  • The challenges of accurately understanding and reporting emissions from AI. This is due to a variety of factors, including inconsistent measurement standards/’creative accounting’ and the nature of AI being embedded into businesses processes/tools, making it difficult to assess the increase or possible decrease in emissions.
  • The need for standardisation or building of some kind of framework to measure AI specific emissions measurement.
  • Concerns with water consumption and the impact of this issue alongside CO2e tracking.
  • Regionality and the politics in certain geographical areas affecting policies and use of AI- more on this in our third session which will focus on policy specifically.
  • Access to primary data for usage of AI tools specifically.
  • The use of AI to assist in standardising carbon measurement- this relates to the work being carried out by the Global Media Sustainability Framework.

What we heard from the speakers:

Dan Ratner, Co-Founder and CEO, Public Good-  “Be an informed consumer of the services. Understand what it is that you’re buying and how these things differ one to another, so you know what questions to ask.” Dig in on the things you do a lot, not the things you don’t do very much. When you’re doing something highly repetitive, you’re doing it a lot in a workflow, that’s where you want to be focusing and where you’ll get your maximum benefit.”

Tim Davis, Principal Architect, Enterprise Architecture, ITV- “Keep asking for that [emissions] data from whoever is providing your services. Where you have control, think about the optimisation, how you can run those models more efficiently. Where you’re consuming a service, it really does come down to those conversations that need to be had. Now is the time when the commercialisation of those services is becoming an issue. The consumer has the power, so it should be part of that conversation”.

Adam Elman, EMEA’s Director of Sustainability, Google- “Try to understand where this sits in terms of your overall impact. Think about how you can use these tools, not only in making sure the tools are as environmentally efficient as possible, but how you can use these tools to reduce the overall impact of your organisation”.

Parallel to the discussion, Ad Net Zero and supporters in the chat shared insightful resources with the group, both used to support the preparation of these sessions and responding to some of the points touched on by the speakers.

These contain material that speak to the above points, and are worth a read for those wanting to delve into the topic more:

SESSION 2:

We Need To Talk About… AI x Sustainability: AI’s Impact on Creativity and Production – 18th February 2025

Watch the trailer here.

Our second webinar was moderated by Jo Fenn, Global Director of AdGreen, and featured three industry leading speakers- Russell Sharpe, Head of Production at APR, Melissa Tifrere, Chief Production Officer at Havas, and Steffen Gentis, Global Production Director at MCA/Reckitt.

An interesting conversation developed around the use of GenAI  to replicate an actors voice in order to quicken the time required to record a voiceover, or replace extras, cutting shoot timelines and traditionally carbon intensive processes, but potentially requiring just as much carbon in the training and development of the GenAI models that provide the tech for those things.

Russell Sharpe felt  “The most likely solution to calculate the effectiveness of AI will be AI itself” while Melissa Tifrere stated that it’s difficult to tell “since we can’t quite measure what we’re saving with AI, it’s hard to tell if we’re saving in the upfront via not travelling etc” vs what the impact will be in the long run.

Steffen Gentis noted that “AI is really helping marketers segment audiences very clearly, and it’s giving a clear database to build insights” … “The real value comes when AI tools are used as enablers, not as replacements, enhancing human creativity and strategic decision making”.

To this point, Russell Sharpe’s musings that “it’s the people that know how to use it are going to change the world. And I think that leads to exciting places in my mind” were particularly pertinent, while Melissa Tifrere outlined the role of Havas’ AI Council and “one creative in New York who is playing in this space for a while and has become their [Havas’] ‘guru'” for AI.

Could you be the next AI guru?

Some key resources from the session included:

  • MCA and the Copenhagen Institute of Future Strategies are running a survey on AI in production. Please take a moment to complete this survey, your thoughts are appreciated. Follow this link.
  • Inclusion of sustainability question in LIONS- Cannes Lions Awards entry guide. We’ll be interested to see if any awards entries outline use of AI to enhance sustainability criteria and performance.

SESSION 3:

We Need to Talk about… AI x Sustainability: The current and future landscape of AI environmental policy and regulation – 4th March 2025

Watch the trailer here.

For the final of our three exclusive AI x Sustainability webinars our panellists included Lorna East, Head of Agency Services at ISBA, Konrad Shek, Public Policy and Regulation Director at the Advertising Association, Alison Pepper, EVP Government Relations & Sustainability at the 4A’s, and Aya Saed, Director of AI Policy and Strategy at Scope3.

Each of these expert speakers had incredibly valuable insights in this space from across different corners of the advertising industry- from carbon measurement and optimisation at Scope3, tracking advertiser usage of AI at ISBA, and policy and governmental insights from the Advertising Association and the 4A’s.

Aya Saed (Scope3) opened the session discussing how we can use generative AI to support growth in our businesses while recognising the carbon cost through life cycle optimisation, before discussing the lack of consensus on AI emissions measurement and the actionable steps one can take now to reduce carbon intensity such as using Hugging Face’s AI Energy Score chart to select less intensive models. She rounded out her introduction discussing how senior executives are addressing the “AI tidal wave”, outlining their awareness- or lack of- of the sustainability impact of AI, and why “conversations like these are so incredibly helpful in helping us to understand or be more aware of the impact of ChatGPT and generative AI”…”and helping equip us with the takeaways that we can use to lower and mitigate those costs, and why those spaces are so important”.

Lorna East (ISBA) discussed ISBA’s launch of a GenAI Contract Terms template to help advertisers contract GenAI services within their media agencies, and shared some high level data points from a year-on-year measurement of UK advertisers using GenAI models, and those who had set AI policies at their organisations. The research showed “rapid growth”…”in terms of UK advertisers who were actively experimenting” with GenAI- a 20% leap between 2023 and 2024- whereas members with an AI policy “only grew by about 7% in the same time period” showcasing a lag between AI activity and policy formation. Lorna said “At ISBA we advocate for a responsible approach to AI adoption” and urged advertisers and other organisations to develop AI policies and conversing with agencies and other supply partners about these.

Konrad Shek (Ad Association) commented on the purpose of the EU AI Act, it being deeply rooted in data privacy and seeing AI as a product, thus following product safety model for legislation. He noted the emphasis on AI developers providing transparency so that the EU office can regulate those plans, but overall, there being a lack of clarity on the protocols this national level policy building could take. UK side, Konrad mentioned the AI Opportunities Action Plan doesn’t specifically reference sustainability, but when the original AI whitepaper went out, the responses included suggestions that it must be a consideration. Konrad suggested, however, that government officials could argue that there is existing sustainability legislation which still applies, it’s just that it’s not sitting specifically within these AI consultations and whitepapers.

When asked about recommendations of where to look for examples of state, national or international level legislation in this space, Alison Pepper (4A’s) noted that in the US there would have been difficulty getting a federal level comprehensive AI legislation bill pushed through no matter the Administration.  “When you’re looking for an approach that scales and that companies want to share, it 100% has to be on ‘you’re saving money on electricity’ [as the message].”

Please see here for a list of resources shared by the speakers as well as some attendees in the chat: